Signal’s mission and sole focus is private communication. For years, Signal has kept your messages private, your profile information (like your name and profile photo) private, your contacts private, and your groups private – among much else. Now we’re taking that one step further, by making your...
I see this as both a win and a potential problem for the app’s reputation:
As soon as you take away a hard link to a real-life identifier, the sketchy people come out of the woodwork and trade images/video of child exploitation.
Signal has not had this problem like some platforms (e.g. Kik), and I suspect two reasons:
Lack of searchable chat rooms
Concrete link to a phone number that anyone who contacts you must know (and make it easy to identify you to authorities)
Up until now signal has been an excellent secure replacement for text messaging between parties that know each other. I hope they don’t go the “chat groups” route, though I doubt they will. But I suspect this change will make it a preferred way for abusers to exchange images and videos nearly anonymously
You still require a phone number to register, and your username is associated with that number. It’s just the other people you chat to don’t get your number - but if you reported a child porn distributor to Signal or law enforcement, they would be able to identify the phone number associated with that username.
I see this as both a win and a potential problem for the app’s reputation:
As soon as you take away a hard link to a real-life identifier, the sketchy people come out of the woodwork and trade images/video of child exploitation.
Signal has not had this problem like some platforms (e.g. Kik), and I suspect two reasons:
Up until now signal has been an excellent secure replacement for text messaging between parties that know each other. I hope they don’t go the “chat groups” route, though I doubt they will. But I suspect this change will make it a preferred way for abusers to exchange images and videos nearly anonymously
You still require a phone number to register, and your username is associated with that number. It’s just the other people you chat to don’t get your number - but if you reported a child porn distributor to Signal or law enforcement, they would be able to identify the phone number associated with that username.
How would that even be caught in the first place though? It’s E2E encrypted so nobody can see what you’re posted unless you invite them.